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Secret World Of Children's Chants

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Anonymous

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I vaguely remember a secret world of rhymes, songs and chants. The stuff we told each other.

Many of them were innocently rude. Some were just nonsense.

Do the rhymes change much over the years?

Does anyone ever remember any of it?
 
'Georgie Best superstar, walks like a woman and wears a bra' springs to mind instantly. Why we made fun of a top footballer and his (allegedly) cross dressing activities I don't know. Do kids do the same rhyme for Owen and Beckham now????

Iona and Peter Opie's book 'The lore and Language of Children' has tons of examples but I've lost my copy in the abyss that is my loft.........

I also remember using compasses to give each other vaccinations (don't ask me against what).
 
That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. I remember that one - to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar.

"My friend Billy had and 12 inch willy and he showed it to the girl next door. She thought it was a snake and she hit it with a rake and ... " I can't remember the rest.

Who made up these rhymes?

I think I'll look for a copy of that book.
 
To the tune of Star Wars (and even more relevant now).......

"Star Wars made me fortune,
Paid off my mortgage
Bought me a car"

There is an unspoken poetic genius at work.

(to finish off the above, my version has "6 foot willy" and ends with "and now its only 3 foot 4." I'm not bragging but.......)
 
Build a bondi, build a bondi
Put the teachers on the top
Put (insert worst enemies name here) in the middle
and burn the f***ing lot!!

(For those of you who aren't sure, a bondi is a bonfire in the NE.)
 
I remember "Liar, liar pants on fire!" was always a good put down. If only it were true, we could all gather round the smoldering arses of politicians in the winter.

I vaguely remember at school that when someone shouted lets play tag the common reply would be "turn around touch the ground baggsey not it!", obviously the last person to say this unfortunately was "it" and had "the lurgey" aswell so nur-nur nur nur-nur.
 
the following works best as a kind of tribal chant:
'Diarrhoea, Diarrhoea, its comes out your bum like a bullet from a gun,
Diarrhoea, Diarrhoea, the nurses like to treat it but the doctors like to eat it'
and add as many verses as you can.

Good insult chant I remember:
'Lets all go to Tesco's, where Billy gets his best clothes,
nah na na, nah na na'
(Note to our American readers - Tesco's is not famed for its sylish children's clothes'.)

Good source for various children's insults and random cruelties they inflict upon each other is the classic and definitive 'Law of the Playground'
http://www.log.dial.pipex.com/playground/index.htm
I am proud to say that I have contributed an entry. Look under H for 'Hitler Baby'
 
Igpay atinlay

I'm really interested in this sort of thing, especially childhood pretend-languages like pig latin. I mean, the name itself is damn funny - neither latin nor anything to do with the swineys - but it's also interesting the way kids have these 'secret' ways of communicating that are supposed to be unintelligible to adults. Except it's not secret at all, because the adults used to speak it themseves. Adults just pretend not to understand it. Although it does get harder to use if you don't talk it for a while, so it's kind of like something that most people knew once but only the youngest can really talk in. I'd like to make pig latin translations of the bible, Shakespeare etc.

I've had various personal languages in my time, but they are mostly ways of changing syllabic order or adding extra sounds along PL lines, or small vocabularies that could be used to talk about any subject if you were prepared to sacrifice all clarity. More ways of playing about with language than of communicating secretly.

I think there are quite a few cases of twins etc developing their own 'languages', though I'd imagine in most cases these are actually normal English (or whatever) either encoded, as in pig latin, or with made-up words substituted one-for-one for normal terms. Did anyone here have their own secret language, and if so how complex was it? Leaving aside the obvious stuff about the Voynich ms, public languages like Esperanto, and all the rest, have there been many cases of actual invented languages, as opposed to ciphers, codes, steganographies or special vocabularies like thieves cant or polari?
 
My brother and his best buddy used to have their own language. It used to drive me mad and they damn well knew it. They'd say all sorts of weird and wonderful things and i hadn't got a clue what they were talking about.
Apparently at a recent school reunion, someone asked them if they could still do it. :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Could they remember it? And was like English with new words stuck in, or was it different on the levels of syntax or grammar too? What sort of range of things could they talk about?
 
Exclusivity

I think to a greater or lesser extent that within our close social groups as aldults and children we use original words, words with new meanings and slang to reinforce and confirm the exclusivity of the group.

I know that within my group of friends we add new meanings to words initially to be funny but with constant use the have become our everyday vocabulary.

For instance 'Parsnip' meaning a substandard alternative, coming from the family roast dinner scenario where your mum used to try and pass off roast parsnips as roast potatoes, a substandard vegetable interloper.

Also 'wife beater' meaning a white vest, coming from american movies in which it is the almost exclusive upper body attire of the serial, often italian, wife beater.
 
Could they remember it? And was like English with new words
stuck in, or was it different on the levels of syntax or grammar too? What sort of range of things could they talk about?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes apparently they did manage a few sentences.
What they used to do was use "sounds likes", bangers and mash (anything that began with M was mash and B was bangers) and also things that seemed to have a very obscure connection, obvious to them but not to the rest of us.
Can't think of any examples offhand but i will mention it next time i see bro and see if i can get a few sentences out of him. They could cover any subject but i suspect that if anything most of it was smutty sexual inuendo, the stuff that adolescent lads find amusing.
 
Also 'wife beater' meaning a white vest, coming from american movies in which it is the almost exclusive upper body attire of the serial, often italian, wife beater.

Interesting. Round our way 'wife beater' means Stella Artois, the madness-inducing imitation strong continental lager.

Cheers Bulldog - I'd be interested to see anything you come up with.
 
tomsk said:
Interesting. Round our way 'wife beater' means Stella Artois, the madness-inducing imitation strong continental lager.

Cheers Bulldog - I'd be interested to see anything you come up with.

Stella is nelson, round my way, through a bit of cod cockney rhyming slang. Stella Artois - Stella - Nelson Mandela - Nelson.
 
Re: Igpay atinlay

tomsk said:
I think there are quite a few cases of twins etc developing their own 'languages', though I'd imagine in most cases these are actually normal English (or whatever) either encoded, as in pig latin, or with made-up words substituted one-for-one for normal terms.

I have a vague memory of this, so apologies if some details are muddled

There was a set of twin girls who lived in west Wales in the 1980s. They became famous because they carried out a series of arson attacks. They only talked to each other and no one else for years. They had their own language i believe. I'll go and do some searching and see if I can find any more. I know there was a television programme about them.

edit: I found this link
http://www.hibernation.co.uk/junegibbons.htm
 
simonsmith said:
That's the kind of thing I was thinking of. I remember that one - to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar.

"My friend Billy had and 12 inch willy and he showed it to the girl next door. She thought it was a snake and she hit it with a rake and ... " I can't remember the rest.

Who made up these rhymes?

I think I'll look for a copy of that book.

Simon, the version I remember goes:

My uncle Billy, he had a 10 foot willy
He showed it to the lady next door
She thought it was a snake and she hit it with a rake
And now it's only two foot four.

I used to think that was absolutely the last word in daring poetry!

Carole
 
chatsubo said:
the following works best as a kind of tribal chant:
'Diarrhoea, Diarrhoea, its comes out your bum like a bullet from a gun,
Diarrhoea, Diarrhoea, the nurses like to treat it but the doctors like to eat it'
and add as many verses as you can.

Good insult chant I remember:
'Lets all go to Tesco's, where Billy gets his best clothes,
nah na na, nah na na'
(Note to our American readers - Tesco's is not famed for its sylish children's clothes'.)

Good source for various children's insults and random cruelties they inflict upon each other is the classic and definitive 'Law of the Playground'
http://www.log.dial.pipex.com/playground/index.htm
I am proud to say that I have contributed an entry. Look under H for 'Hitler Baby'

My kids say the first one you mentioned, Chatsubo. they also chant the following:

Netto, Netto, cheap and nifty
Fill your trolley for one pound fifty.

Another good source, although written in the 50s/60s is 'The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren' written by Iona and Peter Opie.

Carole
 
I remember this one from school:

Trebor mints are a minty bit stronger
Stick 'em up your bum and they last a bit longer.....
 
Wasted Playtime

When the bell rang for playtime. Putting our arms round each others sholders and patrolling the playground like some primary school can can company we used to sing "Line up for army, No girls allowed". By the time we had collected enough people for the game of army playtime would be over. The next day the same thing would happen, I can't EVER remember actually having a game of army.

Oh by the way

"Milk, milk, lemonade,
round the corner chocolate's made"
 
I'm popeye the sailor man,
I live in a caravan,
I live with my granny,
and tickle her fanny,
I'm popeye the sailor man.
 
Ref: Bilderbergers Star Wars post

We had a French exchange visit to our school in '79. One of the girls was called Chantal Artout and all the lads in our school kept calling her R2D2.....

Oh you'll never get to heaven
In a biscuit tin
'cos a biscuit tin
Has biscuits in....


Oh you'll never get to heaven
In a brownies bra
'cos a brownies bra
Won't stretch that far.....
 
When you fell out with your best mate, you had to chant............

"Make friends
Make friends
Never ever break friends
If you do
You'll catch the flu
And that'll be
The end of you"

Don't you reckon that a couple of verses of that could sort out Bishop Manchester and David Farrant's problems?
 
who .. wants .. to .. play ... Bri - tish Bull - dog ? ... who .. wants .. to play ... Bri - tish Bull - dog ? etc etc
 
British Bulldogs was a b***ard of a game. We had one kid ended up in hospital with a broken arm and concussion.

Anybody used to play Kingy?

Someone had a ball (tennis or similar size) and they used to wang it as far and as hard as they could into the crowd who were running around the yard. If you got hit, you had to throw the ball, providing you could still stand.
 
I remember the limerick about "my friend Billy..." and his improbably long member from the early 50s.

My Junior school was next to an army barracks, and there were a few rhymes using 'army' and 'barmy'. But we also had
"We won the war
In Nineteen forty four!"

(It should have been 1945, but that didn't rhyme!)
 
Well, it was pretty much won after Stalingrad...we also had Billy at our school. If it happened in the 50's he must have recoveredby now, surely? We used to play 'kiss, cuddle or torture', which involved girls chasing boys and if the boy was caught he had to choose one. I wasn't a very fast runner.
 
We had this old lady round the corner from us and she was always nasty to us so we used to stand outside her house singing

Mrs Hopkins sells rum
Three ha'pence a drum
Don't buy, it, don't buy it,
it's been up her bum

And round our way, Billy's willy ended up four feet four (must say something about the men in the East Midlands)
 
(Steps forward cautiously into street light, clears throat.
Begins to declaim:)


Pounds shillings and pence
The lady fell over the fence
She found a plum
As big as her bum
Pounds shillings and pence.



Red white and blue
You dirty kangaroo
You went behing the dustbin
And did your number two.



Donald Duck
Did some muck
Behind the kitchen door
When Mrs Duck
Wiped it up
Donald did some more.


(Steps backwards into the gloom again.......)
 
Never heard that version of the Popeye song. I used to know a few versions to it but I can't recall them now. I remember the Trebor mints song and "Liar, Lair". I also remember a family song about snot that invloved ice cream flavors! :cross eye
 
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